Obsession: Stories about scientific fixations

Science has a way of inspiring obsession. In this week’s episode, both our storytellers spiral deep into a personal all-consuming preoccupation.

Part 1: Curtis Chou becomes dogmatic in his quest to correct a person’s incorrect fact on the internet.

Curtis Chou is a science communicator, puzzle enthusiast, and all-around adventure seeker. Curtis’s preferred bubble tea order is half-sweet strawberry milk tea with pearls and less ice.

Part 2: Richard Cardillo is determined to uncover a priest’s secret to keeping a thriving cactus collection.

Richard Cardillo is a six-time Moth StorySLAM winner who's appeared on The Moth Radio Hour and the Moth podcast. He is featured on The Best of RISK! #12 podcast. He’s performed at Story Collider, RISK!, Yum's the Word, PBS Stories From The Stage, and Big Irv’s Storytelling Show. Rich is a passionate bread baker and, yes, has gone to that quirky (scary?) place of naming his 16-year-old sourdough starter.

Rich is also a 25-year resident of NYC's Lower East Side and has been an educator for over three decades on two continents and in three languages. He's instructed on all levels from preschool to graduate programs, considering himself still more of a learner than a teacher....but always a storyteller!

Episode Transcript

Part 1

Mark Twain once said that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth puts its boots on. And this particular truism is a real source of frustration for science communicators because we all want to share the marvels of science and nature and technology with all the people and combat misinformation wherever we find it.

But the fact is that this absolute deluge of misinformation coming at us often presents a bit of a problem. In particular, people are wrong on the internet all the time. And every once in a while, I make it my special mission to set the record straight.

This story properly begins in the comments section of a YouTube video about dinosaurs, where somebody's talking about, “Oh, you know, these dinosaurs that we have so much trouble telling apart, wouldn't it be interesting if it was like a lion and a tiger? And if we just saw them alive, it'd be really obvious which one was which.”

I can get behind that.

But then, I see a reply from Darth Ace, and Darth Ace says, “Well, actually, tigers have 432 bones and lions only have 250, so we'd pretty much be able to tell them apart without much trouble.”

No, no, no, no. That's not okay.

In case this doesn't set off alarm bells for you right away, let's have a quick crash course in vertebrate anatomy. All the mammals have pretty much the same bones, right? Like we have one big bone in our upper arm, two medium-sized bones, and a bunch of tiny bones, same as all of the other mammals.

Or another example, from teeny, tiny mice all the way up to big, tall giraffes, we've all got seven bones in our necks, with a couple of random exceptions.

Curtis shares their story at The Beaumont Studios in Vancouver, BC in April 2022. Photo by Rob Shaer.

And really closely related animals, like lions and tigers, should have pretty much the same bones too. So around 250 checks out for lions. After all, us people, we've got 206 as adults, lions have extra pieces in the tail, so I'm fine with that.

But 432 in a tiger is absolutely egregious. That's twice as many bones. 432. Where do they think the other 200 bones are hiding? 432 flies in the face of everything we know about vertebrate anatomy. And Darth Ace just floated it out there with such nonchalance.

So I decided I had to intervene. This is a popular YouTube channel. This is the top comment. The general public is going to see this and going to be defenseless. So I need to step in there and do battle against my archnemesis, someone who is wrong on the internet.

Normally, when I approach someone who is wrong on the internet, you find a reputable source. You paste them a link, you send them on your merry way and it's all good. In fact, as an example, that quotation that I started this story off with, that's not a Mark Twain quotation.

Many people have been saying this over and over in some way, shape, or form long before Mark Twain was around. And we can find any number of online articles detailing exactly how this is the case. Or better yet, you could go back to the primary documents and see that hundreds of years before Mark Twain was born, there were other writers and speakers that were talking about truth in its boots.

Not so for tiger bones. If you do a Google search for tiger bones, all you're going to find is that mischievous 432. 432 is absolutely everywhere. And there’s no convenient debunking article. There's no handy reputable source for me to refer to. So I just thought the truth is really lagging behind here.

Like, the truth hasn't just not got its boots on yet. The truth is in bed. The truth is hitting the snooze button over and over, and so I'm going to give it a wake-up call. I've decided to start by looking for the source of 432.

I dug around and I saw this science communicator from 2016 who remarked, “Ah, I did some research online and scientific textbooks seem to say that there are 432 bones.”

I thought, “Well, that's interesting. Let me email the guy and ask him some more.”

His response, though kind, was rather disappointing. He said, “I'm pretty sure I just Googled it and perpetuated the problem.”

And I got this response a lot. Some of the museums that I messaged, and, yes, museums, plural, despite having the physical evidence in front of them of exactly how many bones the tiger should have, told me confidently, “Yup, 432 sounds right to me.”

It was so disappointing. Like, we as humans are so lazy. We just want to regurgitate the handy little tidbits that we find because it takes so much more effort to actually read and evaluate all those sources and figure out what's trustworthy or not.

So since this initial line of inquiry led me nowhere, I decided to send emails to everyone I could think of that might know: grad students, professors, veterinarians, field biologists, some of the leading experts in the fields of tiger biology. They all got back to me with more or less the same response. “432 doesn’t sound right, but we couldn't tell you what the number actually was.”

Come on. It was so sad to see that all these people that knew that 432 was wrong also just couldn't be bothered to sit around and count any bones for me.

At this point, I'm running out of options. It's time to do the unthinkable, the unimaginable, and the incredibly menial. I was going to count them myself.

I went and found every photo, every diagram of a tiger skeleton that I could and I counted up all those bones. If you want, you can bust out a phone calculator right now. We can add them all up together. We've got 29 in the skull, 30 along the spine, 36 in the ribs and the chest, 62 in the arms and fingers, 58 in the legs. And this last bit varies a little bit, but there's around 19 in the tail. Which, if you add it all up, gives us 234.

It was a typo. 234, 432. They just got it the wrong way around. I saw this and I was like, “Well, now I've got it.” I was ready to message all of my friends, my co-workers, email back all those scientists and museum curators and say, “Look at this. I got it.” I was ready to scream it from the rooftop.

But then I stepped back and I thought, “Well, now what?” After all, if you go back to that YouTube video, 432 is still the only number you see there. It's the only number you'll find when you Google Search it now. It definitely didn't save any lives or solve any big global problems. It didn't even change Darth Ace's mind when I told him.

So I found myself sitting face to face with someone who is wrong on the internet and I realized I'd spent all this time and energy and I didn't win anything. I spent this time just fussing over the truth's boot laces.

I never should have started on this journey as some sort of intellectual superiority quest. I turned up my nose at all these brilliant minds all over the world that I had the chance to learn incredible things about and join in the work that their cool projects were doing all because they didn't know some silly number.

In thinking that, I came to see someone who is wrong on the internet not so much as an adversary, but a partner. Someone who was wrong led me to think more deeply, study more broadly, and find new ways of understanding. Someone who is wrong pushed me to build relationships where I never would have built them before and forge new connections with others. And someone who is wrong created an opportunity for everyone to learn something new and fun and not just be right.

So I guess, what I'm saying is the truth isn't just something to fight for, but something to do for the joy of it too.

Thank you so much.

Part 2

I was born into a really religious family. I was the sixth child in a family that would eventually swell to nine children in this Italian Catholic family in White Plains, New York. And our life was dictated by our faith. Friday night saying the rosary on our knees in the living room, doing novenas, going to mass on Sundays, celebrating every feast.

Ever since that young age, I had this desire inside of me to tap into that part of religion that had to do with secret knowledge. I'm sure an awful lot of that concept of wanting to have secret knowledge didn't really come just from the Bible. It probably came from comic books as well, but I did want to have, in its purest form, this idea of the secrets of the universe so that I could save my soul, help save the world.

Now that 40 years have passed by, I knew subconsciously in some form or another at the time, I was thinking the secret knowledge would start taking away these feelings I was having as a young kid of why did these guys look so good to me.

I knew I was gay by the time I was in high school, but I knew being gay was not an option. I couldn't live that way in my family. I had no gay role models so I could not go through the motions. I thought my life was destined to be just a miserable, flaming fop of a man because I just had no other concept of what that could be.

So I made this profound decision in my life at the age of 16. I made the decision at the age of 16 to go the religious route and deliver my life to Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary and become a monk in a Catholic monastery with a vow of celibacy.

A little bit weird to start out your life that way as you're just going through adolescence, but I knew it was the only way out. And I tried, and I was really keeping that vow. I knew I would. I go through all the formation. I learned how to live with the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And I knew that I had to just be really diligent and really keep these thoughts repressed as much as I could.

Richard Cardillo shares his story with a limited audience at The Tank Theater in New York City in February 2022. Photo by Zhen Qin.

I finished my formation and I go out teaching to an all-boys Catholic school in Harlem. It just wasn't busy enough for me, so my superior gave me six classes to teach every day, coach the track team, run the student government, do the parish bingo every Friday night. And then in the evening, go to Columbia University, which is about 15 blocks away, to get my master's degree. I just had to keep busy. I knew that.

On top of all of that, my superior gave me an extra job. My job was going to be taking care of the oldest member of our community, Brother Augustine. Brother Gus. I was 22 years old at the time. I was just learning about life and myself, and I figured maybe I could learn at the feet of this man.

Let me describe Brother Augustine, or Brother Gus, a little bit to you. He wasn't your holy card type with his eyes up to heaven and the halo on him kind of floating in a cloud. He was a cross between a pretty holy guy, a pretty cantankerous curmudgeon, and a vicious prick. That man had it out for me and rode me.

I was in charge of waking up with him to say special prayers, getting him dressed, making sure he had his two canes to walk wherever he went, making sure that his cigarette ashtray was emptied and he had his bottle of scotch hidden away. I was the person that was taking care of all of this for him.

In return, he gave me nothing. He never ever once called me by my name. My nickname for Brother Gus was ‘oh ye fucking shite’. Brother Gus was 92 years old from County Kerry and he went through what they called at the time the white martyrdom. He came to the United States on a ship at the age of 20 to do the Lord's work in the streets of New York City and he never went back.

I think that frustration and that rage took over through his life and showed itself in different ways, so I was there to take care of him.

Very shortly, he had me taking care of his most important passion. So now, I was not only the caregiver for the oldest monk in the community, Brother Gus, I was the caregiver for his deepest passion in life, taking care of his cactus garden.

I know, too good to be true. A very prickly man, his passion in life was a cactus garden. But he was dedicated to this and he was known around the world. Botanists would write to him. He had a documentary made about him. He had articles published about him, so he was a big deal.

The brothers got together and built him a greenhouse on the roof of the school on 124th and Lennox, and he'd sent me up there saying, “You must go up this morning and you must turn cactus number two to the left and water it with six drops. And you must go to cactus number 22 and move it to the right. Only one drop of water, please.”

And he would say this, and I didn't know if he was riding me or if this was for real.

I also had to keep his secrets. I had a vow of obedience. And for him, with his voice as a 90‑some odd year‑old man and me as a 20-some odd year-old learning neophyte, he was the voice of God.

So he looked to me and he said, “You must keep my secrets. They are safe with you.”

One of the things I'd have to keep a secret about was he’d, before morning prayer, go to do his constitutional on the street. I'd help him put on his big, big black cape over his long black robe. He looked like Dracula. It was amazing. And he'd go out in the bitter cold of winter to pray and say the rosary as well.

He'd come in, I'd help him in, and he'd continue the rosary while walking around the dining room table that was already set up for all the brothers. He'd go up at random to one of the cups and he'd have that little drop of mucus from coming in from the cold and he'd move his head and he'd make it go into one of the cups.

He'd look at me and say, “Don't you dare tell anybody who got it today, you fucking shite.” It was a little way of getting back to the world.

So we'd go to morning prayer, I'd get back to the table, I’d take my napkin and rub out my cup very quickly. But this is the way that he ran his life.

He was also a very big drinker. He really had a drinking issue. So what he'd asked me to do is we'd have to say evening rosary and he'd want me to say 'speed rosary’ with him. We'd go as fast as we can so that he can get the first of many scotches inside of him. And we'd be there praying them Hail Mary, Holy Mary. Hail Mary, Holy Mary. Hail Mary, Holy Mary. Glory Be, Our Father. Hail Mary, Holy Mary. It would just be so fast and, again, I'd be wondering. Is this guy for real? Is this really what he wants to do or is he just making fun of me and having a joke on me?

I was the best caregiver I could be to him, but I got none of this in return.

Very shortly after that, Brother Gus, who was a lifelong smoker, got a diagnosis of lung cancer. The doctor said, “You have about two months to live,” and he wanted to die in the monastery. So my caregiving was upped even further for him. That I'd have to bathe him and clean him and go into his room during the night and make sure that he had his medicines, and make sure that I was hiding the scotch bottles in the bottom bureau drawer for him. I'd have to do all of this as his caregiver.

One time, he called me up and it was the first time he called me by my name. He said, “Come here, Brother Mark.” My name's Richard, Richard Cardillo. But when you join a monastery to show your new identity in life, you take a new name. So for the entire time I was in the monastery, my name was Brother Mark.

And he called me over and said, “Brother Mark, I've made the decision that the secret of my cacti won't die with me. Everybody has wanted it, but you are going to get the secret and you must keep the secret safe.”

Secret knowledge. That was all I had to hear. I was getting my secret knowledge. And I promised him.

He said, “I'm writing it down for you. I'm going to leaving it with your superior, Brother Josephat.” I said okay.

Five days later, he died. I prepared his body for death. I helped take the body up to the brothers’ cemetery in Upstate New York and buried him. We said all the ritual prayers and I drove back that night.

I get back to the monastery and Brother Josephat greets me. He said, “Brother Mark, you've been left this from Brother Gus,” and he gave me the envelope.

I'm looking at the fount of secret knowledge. Is this going to be the allegory of how to save myself? Is this going to be a metaphor for what life is really about? Am I finally, finally going to get this secret knowledge?

I go to my cell. It's not a prison cell, but it felt like that. I go to my cell, sit down on my cot, and I open the envelope. And in the most beautiful calligraphy, it was just gorgeous. It looked saintly. I read the following, “I hereby bequeath to Brother Mark the secret knowledge of how to grow the cacti and make them flourish. Number one, every morning before morning prayer, go down to the corner of 124th and Lennox. Number two, go up to the news kiosk and buy the New York Times national edition. Number three, before morning prayer starts, go up to your cell and open the newspaper to the national weather section. And lastly, when it rains in Phoenix, Arizona, water the cacti.”

I threw it as hard as I can, not knowing again if this was a joke or truth. And I would never figure that out. It would take me about 14 more years to leave that life behind and live a more authentic life, the life I was meant to live.

Through those years since then, I left when I was 33 years old and I'm 63 now, and in those ensuing years, I've found an awful lot of secret knowledge. The secret knowledge is how to love. How to be loved. I knew that I could finally learn how to be a caregiver. I knew I was a rotten caregiver for him because I never knew how to take care of myself. So that was another thing I learned, how to deal with death in my life. How to deal with activism and making community and making sure people felt important. These were the secrets I learned.

That other secret knowledge that I wanted in my life, to gain salvation, right now I look at that and that secret knowledge, it's just about as important to me as when it rains in Phoenix, Arizona.

Thank you.